The 100-Year War On Drugs Has Failed — Does Portugal Have the Answer?

Police are better equipped, better trained and better resourced than ever in the crusade against illicit drugs.

Record hauls are made with astonishing regularity, where police breathlessly announce yet another mammoth seizure that is ridding the scourge from our streets and locking up drug barons.

And our governments continue to throw eye-watering amounts of money at it — more than $1 billion in 2009-10 alone.

Yet, illicit drugs are more freely available than ever, organised crime is not withering, prices have tumbled, experimentation is rife and the nation is in the grips of an ice pandemic that’s prompted the establishment of a national taskforce. And it’s a similar picture around the world, where in the likes of Mexico and South America, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to the drugs industry.